Random Updates

I finally beat Final Fantasy XII, after playing for an ungodly amount of time. I got all these really good weapons, did a bunch of side quests, and thoroughly trounced the final boss to save all of Ivalice from utter destruction. Yes, I am cool.

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I started playing this game called Bully, which is Rockstar's now-not-so-recent release after their Grand Theft Auto series with the new spin that instead of a gun wielding gangster causing mayhem, you are instead a new student at the boarding school Bullworth Academy, trying to earn respect and navigating your way through cliques. Being the nerd that I am, I first went to pass all the classes before exploring the random errands/missions/tasks that are available. The game apparently got some criticism for trivializing the reality of bullying, but with gained abilities from passing classes, it certainly promotes the benefits of learning in class!

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Finally, since I found these images on Google Images, I also noticed Google launched an Image Labeler game where you and some other random person try to tag the same image until you agree on a label while trying to do this to as many images in a fixed amount of time. This is certainly not the first of its kind (I believe the exact thing came out of academia a couple years ago), but it was pretty addictive. There are some deadbeat partners out there that can make it annoying, but all in all pretty fun way to enlist the masses to do some gruntwork in tagging images:

http://images.google.com/imagelabeler

My top score for the day is 1100, which was only good enough for 6th and not featured on the Top 5... we even had two broken images!!! So cheated!!!!!

Xmas Break!

Wow, I don't know how I'm going to be able to sit at my desk tomorrow morning after being away for a few weeks... a lot happened, but I'm about to pass out, so here are the highlights, of course visiting the three cities where I now spend almost all of my time:

1) New York
Back in the Big Apple for work, but this time with Ruth joining as she started break from med school! Besides catching the musical Spelling Bee, we spent a lot of time doing the usual two things:

a) Shopping
A lot of our walking and subway riding was en route or return from a particular shopping destination. I didn't really end up buying much except presents to bring back, but Roothie managed to pick up a few pairs of boots. Along the way, we caught some sights and took some pics, ranging from the traditional Rockefeller Center Christmas tree to the stacks of Nintendo Wiis at the flagship Toys R Us store in Times Square waiting to go home for the holidays.

b) Eating
When we weren't shopping, we were eating... ranging from the standard pizza fare in random pizza parlors, grabbing Japanese/Korean food with Amy, Austin, Kyu Ha, and Karen or more pizza at Amy/Austin's place while we played the Wii!! I was pretty excited to have a night off of shopping and instead spent playing Rayman Raving Rabbids :)

2) Dallas
From New York, we made a quick stop through Dallas to attend the wedding a few college friends, Joe-Joe and Grace. It was a really nice wedding and it of course gave Ruth and I ideas on what we might want to incorporate this June...

3) SF Bay Area
Finally back home after about 10 days away, we flew back on Christmas Eve and decided last minute to try put together a Christmas dinner. It went pretty well, but we made way too much food, so I'm still eating leftovers and am pretty tired of ham already :( My parents made the trip out from Singapore to spend Christmas with us and we spent some time catching up, including a quick afternoon trip up to Marin and a stroll with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

When we weren't spending time with family, we were catching up on wedding planning, putting together a registry, looking at wedding party attire, and taking engagement photos! The latter was the most fun as we just had to stand around and pose when told.. the photos came out pretty well and we celebrated by visitng Aaron Brothers multiple times and buying up a whole bunch of photo frames.

That's it for now... usual Picasa Web Album with additional pics... time for some sleep and getting through this week...

Happy New Year!